"Whenever a Pasta de Conchos memorial comes up, people seek me out to speak to me and I tell them again why I collect rubbish... As if I did it for fun. My son lived with me and was the one who sustained me... Because of the authorities, I have been working in a rubbish tip since my son died. I leave at six in the morning after drinking a cup of coffee with biscuits. I take a tin of tuna, tortillas or whatever I can eat in the rubbish tip... I get home in the afternoon...

There are brave and extraordinary women throughout the world, fighting against the patriarchy that in many countries has women silenced, marginalised, threatened and harassed. PBI has the priviledge of accompanying women human rights defenders that fight for a fairer world, a world where rights are the same for everyone and a world where social justice is a reality.

In the State of Coahuila in the North of Mexico, for years hundreds of families have organised themselves in order to search for their loved ones who have been forcefully disappeared. According to the official statistics in Coahuila, between 1995 and 2018, 1,779 cases have been registered.

Within the framework of the 12 years since the tragedy of the Pasta de Conchos mine in the coal region of Coahuila in Mexico, on 18th February 2018 representatives of the Family Organisation Pasta de Conchos presented the report "Red coal in Coahuila: here ends the silence", in Mexico City. This publication, supported by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, tells "the story of the human and environmental cost that the extraction of coal has brought and left" in this northern region of the country; it also documents the struggle that the family members of the 65 miners who lost their lives 12 years ago in the mine have undertaken.

From the 9th til 13th April, a delegation of lawyers from Spain visited the North of Mexico and Mexico City in order to hear first-hand accounts and to draw attention to the situation that lawyers who defend human rights find themselves in, they also wished to understand the state of implementation of the general laws of torture and forced disappearance as well as the strategies that the organisations and defenders use against the Internal Security Law.

According to the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), during 2017 the number of refugees rose by 578%, and the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance recognised that there is a total of 14,594 people requesting refuge in Mexico. In response, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is collaborating with various refuges in the South of the country and with the Casa del Migrante de Saltillo in Coahila, to help extend spaces and attend the growing number of refugees.

The Director of the Saltillo Migrant Shelter, Alberto Xicoténcatl was invited by Peace Brigades International to participate in several events in Europe with the goal of increasing the visibility to the work carried out by migrant and refugee rights defenders in the state of Coahuila, and the high level of risk associated with their work. In Bilbao, the Spanish Commission to Support Refugees – Euskadi held an event titled “Protecting those who defend” which brought together Special Rapporteur on the situation of HRDs Michel Forst, with human rights defenders from Latin America and the Sahara, and European organizations to reflect on protection needs, strategies, and the specific risks faced by human rights defenders.